Five Steps to a Broken Heart
by Goodwind
Summary: He knows that he had never been as proud of her as when she turned her back on him and said I love you like it was a goodbye. AU, KakaSaku, TeacherStudent


**Title:** Five Steps To A Broken Heart  
**Word Count:** 1168  
**Pairing:** KakaSaku, slight SasuNaru  
**Warning:** AU, TeacherStudent  
**Notes:** Written for **chocolatelimes** as requested via **narutoflashfic**  
**Summary:** He knows that he had never been as proud of her as when she turned her back on him and said I love you like it was a goodbye.

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When he walks into the room he is greeted by an eraser to the head (the nerve of the brat, they're in high school, they should have grown out of this years ago) and a giggling class. He smiles and puts his books on his desk a little harder than necessary, snapping the attention of the class to the front. "While I am glad to see you all bonding, however, if you had time to set such a prank you could have been using it to work on the lessons that your other teachers gave you."

Unlike most, a blond boy didn't break his gaze and instead glared and that boy had a terrible glare and cold, cold eyes, eyes that spoke of loneliness and hatred and being a victim of both. All at once a girl who must dye her hair because, surely, hair cannot be pink though where she found that particular color is beyond him, taps the boy on the shoulder and smiles at him and the ice and cold is wiped away while he smiles and says, "Sakura-chan.". He realizes then that they're Japanese (and he doesn't know why he associates one with the other but for some reason he can't imagine them separately).

She stands when she calls her name --Sakura Haruno-- and meets his eyes with a smile. She says good morning then sits and turns to a black-haired boy to her other side who the blond is currently making faces at and Sakura leans over and whispers at him 'your smile is showing Sasuke-kun,' and suddenly it's gone and the other two are smiling so he knows that it's not those two, it's those three and tries saying it. Sakura, Naruto, Sasuke, and wonders why it flows so well with his name attached. Kakashi.

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She leans down when he, a victim of yet another prank, this one by Naruto and his newfound friend, Kiba, dropped his book and picked it up, handing it to him. She has seen the cover, he knows, and the pages that had laid open when the book hit the ground with a plunk. She smiles though and said, "My uncle writes those and my brother, Naruto, read some once. He said they were no good and refused to show them to me. I understand why now. Sasuke-kun agreed as well, strange that they agreed on anything." She laughs then and does not bother to elaborate why she went out of her way to tell him that both Naruto and Sasuke were her brothers.

She bows her head slightly and walks past him to her next class

Brother, he thinks, and does not dwell on why he's relieved. He flips his book open and rereads the page, thinks, and age means nothing, and does not dwell on that either.

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"That's one hell of a fetish," Anko says one day as she sits in the chair that she had claimed as hers. He stares at her, steady and blank, "it's not a fetish Anko, if there is nothing there." She laughs then, her head falling back and her laugh throaty. "And you, Kakashi, are a fool." She stares at him hard then, studying him, his body his everything and he can't get away. He doesn't know that he wants to anyway.

She frowns and says, "You are a fool, Kakashi, aren't you? You can't see it." She stands, pushing the chair away from her body, and says, "you're not the only one who wants her and if you don't hurry up and stop this game, you're going to be the only one who doesn't get her."

He frowns after her as she leaves, the door closing with a clink and the latch, like always, getting stuck.

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This is not, he thinks, what is proper and he should know, his father taught him proper, burnt it into his brain, his skin, his heart. Sakura is showering, he knows, he can hear it, fresh out of gym and he's standing on the other side and for some reason he simply can't move away from it, from her pleased moans and happy sighs that shouldn't be as clear as they are. The water shuts off and he hears her grab her towel and he stops himself from imagining her naked and rubbing a soft, warm, towel against breast and hair and lower, lower, lower.

He sighs and runs his hand over his face, leaning against the door with Sakura on the other side. He is gone when she comes out but his scent, now mixed with hers, is not.

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Sakura stands in front of him one day and waits for him to look up at her, stares straight at his head and waits. He sighs and puts his pencil down and pushes his books away, pushing his chair back and standing.

She stares at him for a long moment, as though memorizing his face, before reaching out and touching his cheek, sliding her fingers to his lips and lingering there for a moment before continuing down, down, down past his chin and jaw and neck to pull away when she reaches his chest. And she says, sure as always, just like she's saying anything else, "I love you." and she turns and walks away, leaving him staring at her retreating back and mouthing words that he knew would never have a sound. He does not stop her and, judging by the way that her steps do not falter, she does not expect him to.

He watches her walk out the door and knows that he will never see her again, the words dying on his lips and he turns away thinking ah, so this is heartbreak and wonders if she had broken her own heart and when she had decided this. Could it have been when she leaned against the railing on the roof with him, dangling her coffee over the edge and smiling down at him saying 'sensei, it's nice today,' because he discovered that she mixes Japanese with English when she knows the other will understand.

He can't help but wonder if perhaps it was the time when he was playing basketball with the boys and had turned to see her eyes on him, comprehension dawning as she didn't turn away, and she smiled and held out a towel. He realizes then that no, she had decided long, long ago to give him up, well before she realized that she ever had him at all.

He knows now that he will always have that memory, the one of her straight back, straight in pride and knowledge, turned away from him and the strong set of her shoulders as she didn't once look back and he realizes now that he had fallen, deeply, at that moment and that he would never have her. He knows that he had never been as proud of her as when she turned her back on him and said I love you like it was a goodbye.


End file.
